Hey guys and welcome to another HitFilm tutorial. Hot off the heels of Javert's Flash tutorial,
we have another use for the HitFilm lightning effect from community hotshot, Mike Miller.
Take it away Mike. Hey everybody, Mike Miller with Triem Visual here, and
today we're going to be looking at the "Proton Stream" effect from "Ghostbusters."
1984 or 2016, it's your choice. I'll be using the original 1984 version for
reference, but the look of the proton stream was almost identical in 2016 version.
What makes a proton stream such a distinctive and unique looking effect is the movement
dynamics and qualities of the stream. A proton stream moves like it has mass to
it. Here we can see the beam arcing as it's thrown.
Egon's neutrino wand is pointing upwards, but the beam is curving to land behind the
bar as if it's being affected by gravity. it's this curvature of the proton stream that makes
it a little bit of a tricky build, but that’s OK, because a proton stream is supposed to move
like "rubberized light." One of the signatures of the movie is the
“neutrino wand” animation, which is the idea of “rubberizing” light.
So, here we are in Hitfilm Pro 2017. We're going to make make a Composite Shot, 1920x1080 pixels and 25 frames
per second, and set a duration of ten seconds. We’ll start by creating three 3D points.
The first one will be named “Emitter,” and when using this effect in a shot or a
skit, this should be parented to end of your neutrino wand.
We’ll duplicate this and name the duplicate “Beam Start.”
Parent “Beam Start” to the “Emitter” point.
Duplicate “Beam Start” and name this duplicate “Beam Joint 01.”
Parent the joint to “Beam Start” and move that somewhere else in space.
Create a black plane, renamed "Red Beam." Add a Lightning and Electricity effect to
the “Red Beam” plane and rename this effect "Red Beam Start."
Open up the Lightning effect, move to “Branches” and set the number of branches
to zero. Lower the “Wave Scale” and “twitch scale”
until we have a slightly undulating beam. We'll go into the "Start Point" for the red beam and set that
to the "Beam Start" point. Go to the end properties for the lightning and set the end point to "Beam Joint 01".
Then we'll change the width parameters the Start and End to a higher number--say 3.0.
Finally, we'll go into the “Glow” parameters and turn the “Opacity” down to zero.
Let's move back over to the our layer stack and duplicate “Beam Joint 1,” naming this ”Beam Joint 2,”
We’ll move that somewhere else, and parent
“Joint 2” to “Joint 1.” We’ll make another duplicate point and name
this "Joint 3,” parent “Joint 3” to “Joint 2,” and move that somewhere else…
And we’ll duplicate “Beam Joint 3” one more time and rename this to "Beam Impact."
We'll move “Beam Impact”, but, instead of parenting “Beam Impact” to “Beam Joint 03,” we're going to
parent it to “Emitter.” Now we'll move back to our “Red Beam” plane and duplicate
the "Red Beam" Lightning Effect three times. We'll rename these "Red Beam 02,”
"03,” and “End.” We’ll need to change the start and end points
for the next three segments. Users of versions of Hitfilm prior to 2017
will just have to twirl open the controls and set it manually, but in Hitfilm
2017 it’s easier to use the search bar. First by typing in “Start,” and changing the
points. “Red Beam 02” should start with “Joint
01,” “Red Beam 03” should start with “Joint 02” and “Red Beam End” should
start with “Joint 03.” Move back to the search bar and type “End.”
Change the end for “Red Beam 02” to “Joint 02,” the end of “Red Beam
03” to “Joint 03,” and “Red Beam 04” to “Beam Impact.”
This creates the basic core of our proton stream.
By moving the “Joint” points, we can reshape the curve of the beam. And with our points parented in series
we can easily alter the curve by altering the “Beam Start,” “Joint 01,” Joint 02” and
“Joint 03” points. Let’s make this look a little bit more like the core
of a proton stream. We'll Come over to the “Effects” list and grab
“Glow,” and drag that to the “Red Beam” plane.
In the Glow let's turn the “Intensity” up to something about 2.6. We'll increase “Radius” to
about 90. Next, open up the "Advanced” properties
and check "Use A/B colors." We'll change our A color to an orange and we'll change our
B color to a red. Duplicate this glow, turn down the “Radius”…and
maybe turn down the “Intensity" a bit. That's starting to look like the core of a
proton stream, and, believe it or not, most of the hard work is done.
A log of the rest of this is going to be a lof of duplication, copying and pasting.
We'll come to our Red Beam Plane and duplicate that by hitting Ctrl+D and we'll turn off the bottom copy.
Rename the top layer “Blue Beam.” Come into the effects properties and just go ahead and rename all
of these "Red Beam" lightnings to “Blue.”
Move up to the search bar and type in the words”Trunks,” and change all the trunk values
from 1 to 3. Next come back up and type in "Width,"
and then we'll change all the Beam widths from 3 to 2.5. Next in the search bar, type in "Seed." and
change all the seed values to a different number.
Return to the search bar and type in "Scale" and we'll turn up all the “Wave” and “Twitch”
scales. Next, in the search bar, type "Radius"
We're going to change all the “Start” and “End” radius' of all the blue beam effects EXCEPT for the
Radius of "Blue Beam Start" (which we will leave 0).
For everything else, try a value of 24. While we have “Radius” selected,
let’s adjust the radius' of our glows. I’m going to turn radius of our first glow down from
90 to about 40, and then I'll change the second radius from 23 to 10.
Come back to the top of the search bar and type in type in "Color".
We'll scroll down to the glows and change the "A" and “B” colors from orange and red to
cyan and blue. I’m not happy with the look yet, so I’ll
open up both my glows and adjust the intensity and radius setting
until I’ve got something I'm happy with. Let's go ahead and Unhide our “Red Beam” layer.
Our “Blue Beam” layer is covering up our “Red Beam” layer.
So this is a good time to right-click the “Blue Beam” layer, set it’s Blend Mode to “Add,”
then do the same for the Red Beam. And when we play this back, it’s starting
to look like a “Ghostbusters” proton stream, but the beam could use a bit more of that rubbery
"bounce" to it. Let's see how we can add some more chaotic
motion into this mix... I'm going to hold CTRL and select “Beam Joints” 01, 02, and
03 then press CTRL+D to duplicate them. I'm going to rename each duplicate layer, just adding the word
“Pivot” to the end. CTRL+click again to select all three “Pivot”
layers. And then I'm just going to move them a little bit along the “Y” axis.
I think I’ll move “Pivot 02” the other way…
Now we need to change the existing parenting of the rig.
I'm going to change the parenting of “Beam Joint 01” to parent to the Pivot. I'm going to change the parenting of “Beam Joint 02” to parent to the “Beam Joint 02 Pivot.”
And I'm going to change “Beam Joint 03” to parent to the “Beam Joint 03 Pivot.” Select the “Beam Joint 01 Pivot” layer, open up its
“Transform” properties and activate keyframing for “X Rotation”.
I'll move the playhead to the last frame fo the composite shot and put in a value of--I don’t know…
3. Turn on keyframing for its X rotation.
Move to the end of the composite shot and set this to “-3.”
I’m going to do something similar with my “2” and “3” Pivot layers, moving
the playhead to the beginning of the timeline, activating “X Rotation,” on the "Joint 02" and "Joint 03" pivot layers
moving my playhead to the end of the timeline and setting a value.
Then, putting in the reverse values in the actual “Joint” points
Now when we play this back the rotating point rigs are adding some “bounce” and variation
some variation to the beam. Let me select all of the “Joint” and “Pivot”
points and scrub the timeline so you can see a little more clearly what’s happening.
The “Pivot” points are rotating which is pulling the “Joint” points around in 3D space.
The “Joint” points themselves have been sent to have a counter-rotation to the pivots points so that their orientation doesn't change.
Without this counter-rotation, the beams would be spinning and twisting completely out of control.
We’re almost there! All we need to do is clean things up just a little!
Every once in awhile we can see a "hard corner" where two beams meet.
So, how are we going to fix that? We'll go back into our “Red Beam” plane, come up to
the Controls and type in “Seed”.
Move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline and activate keyframing for all of the Seed values.
(I’m going to change all the Seed values to something random, just to add get more variation going.)
Scrub the playhead through the Composite Shot. When I come somewhere where I can see a hard corner --like
this frame-- then I'll come over to the seed value and just change the seed value a little bit on the surrounding segments until the corner smooths out.
This might take a couple of passes back and forth through the timeline to clean everything
up. (I think I'm also going to increase the “Wave Scale”
of my red beam a little bit to give them a little more wiggle.)
Once you’ve adjusted the Seed keyframes to of the Red Beam to avoid corners, do
the same on the Blue Beam. The next step is to add the flares at
the "Emitter” point and “Impact” point.
Go ahead into our Media Bin and drag in our black plane we’ve already
created, set it’s Blend Mode to “Add,” and we'll go ahead and name this “Emitter Flare.”
Come to the Effects tab, drag in the “Light Flares” effect to this plane.
Change the “Hotspot” position to be the "Beam start" and zero out the “Position” co-ordinates.
Then just go ahead and select your favorite flare. If you have the “Radiance 2.0”
pack from Inscape Digital, load in your favorite one of those.
“Anamorphic Streak” looks good for this.
I'll duplicate the “Emitter Flare” plane, rename that “Impact Flare,” move into the light flares controls and change the “Hotspot”
position to the “Beam Impact” point. For the “Impact Flare,” I’m going to
use a different type. I'll come back over the the effects panel, look for the "Flicker"
effect and drop that on top of both flares. Hitfilm Express users can find the flicker
effect in the “Starter Pack” add-on. Otherwise, you can manually keyframe
the intensity and scale of your flares. Let's get some impact damage going!
Come back over to the Effects panel, scroll down to the “Quick 3D” and drag in the “Bonfire”
effect. I'll parent the Bonfire effect to the “Beam Impact”
point and change it’s “Transform” properties to “0,0” so it’s sitting on top
of the "Beam Impact" point. I don’t want the fire, and I don’t want
the smoke, I just want the embers. So we'll open the Fire properties, uncheck “Active”.
Open up the the “Smoke” properties, uncheck "Active" and
open the “Embers”. I’m going to crank up the
“Amount,” I'm going to crank up the “Size…” …turn up the “Turbulence…”
…and, come up to the Layer Properties, change the Blend Mode to “Add.”
I’m going to change the “Height” property of the Bonfire effect to something around 10, and I think I'm going to open
up its Transform properties and “Scale” that down to about 75.
Come back to the Quick 3D menu and bring in a Missile Smoke.
In the Missile Smoke layer, I'm going to open up the “General,” properties and change the “Attach to Layer” property
to the “Beam Impact” point. And I’m going to go ahead and turn up the “Speed.”
Maybe turn down the “Size", up the “Size Variation.”
Turn “Linger” to 12 and “Linger Variation” to 4.
I’ll go ahead and move the Missile Smoke layer beneath both of the “Beams”.
One last little detail I almost forgot! Come back over to the Effects Panel, find the “Motion
Blur” effect and drag that to both the “Red Beam” and “Blue Beam” layers.
This is it! Our proton stream is done! The last thing to do it open up the “Emitter Point”
and open it’s “Transform” properties. I'm going to activate keyframing on the “Y Rotation,”
move forward a few seconds… Rotate that…move back to the
end…. …and we'll rotate the other way.
And there it is! We've got a proton stream rigged to throw…
…And did I mention that this rig is in 3D? Incidentally, this type of multi-segment, multi-layer lightning
rig can also be modified for “Flash” effects. The same basic rig can be used to create
long, lightning trails that wrap around corners.
So, taking the information in this tutorial and applying it alongside the information in Javert’s recent
tutorial on Justice League Flash Effects will help you create all kinds of speedster special effects!
This was a fairly complected build. If you got lost, there should be a template
available for download on the Hitfilm Preset Marketplace at inscapedigital.com
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, I hope you’ve learned something today.
I’m Mike Miller with Triem Visual, and cut to the “Subscribe” button!